Category: Newsletter

Pricier Boston parking meters is a start

Pricier Boston parking meters is a start

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AS PUBLISHED IN BOSTINNO ON JAN. 18, 2017 

Brendan Kearney is the Communications Director at WalkBoston and a member of the Boston Vision Zero Task Force. 

The City of Boston recently rolled out a performance parking initiative that includes flexible parking meter pricing in the Seaport and Back Bay. Prices will be lower on streets that consistently have availability, while the meter price will be higher on streets that are often filled. You may be able to park a little farther away to save a few quarters, which frees up a spot closer for someone who needs it – or doesn’t mind paying a little more.

Kudos to Mayor Marty Walsh. The city is on the right track with a pilot project like this one. Boston is home to an innovation economy. We should be pushing for more pilot projects to change how our streets and curbside spaces are allocated.

If modifying the price of parking can help change habits, all the better. People may realize that for many of their daily trips, it is cheaper and more convenient to walk, take the bus/train, or bike, leading to fewer cars on the road and endless searches for a spot curbside. Boston should also follow the lead of surrounding communities like Cambridge ($25), Somerville ($40), Brookline ($25) and Quincy ($20) offering annual residential parking permits to help pay for city services.

The Boston Globe’s Dante Ramos makes the argument that the new meter price isn’t nearly high enough, and it is hard to disagree with his logic: “Before Boston adopted the current rate in 2011, the city had charged curbside parkers $1 an hour for the previous 30 years. By comparison, MBTA subway fares rose from 60 cents in 1982 to $2.25 today. Had meters merely kept up with inflation since 1981, they’d cost $2.66 an hour citywide.”

While cities and towns don’t control the MBTA, the cities and towns do control most of the streets and signals. The City of Everett debuted a bus-only lane in December during the morning rush hour, helping to speed the trips along a busy corridor. A similar pilot on Summer Street in South Boston would be well worth a try. Stacy Thompson at LivableStreets Alliance says “[buses] can be awesome, and they should be fun.” More pilot projects for bus corridor improvements can help with that.

Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) released a report in October titled “Fast Forward” giving a snapshot of transformative changes in transportation and how they could play out in Massachusetts. One key takeaway of the report: “Walking – along with biking and transit use – allows vast numbers people to navigate tight urban spaces without contributing to congestion, supporting the vibrant mix of businesses, amenities and housing that make Massachusetts’ cities special. No innovative mobility solutions work for the urban core, therefore, unless they enable and foster walkability.”

Let’s not be afraid to try out new solutions on our streets, which may just be new to us, of course; many cities around the United States have been trying out pilot projects to improve transportation. The goal shouldn’t be innovation for innovation’s sake, but to find ways to make our cities a better place for more people to work, live, and play – no matter how they are getting around.

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s March 2017 newsletter.
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Funding equity is the missing link to our transportation future

Funding equity is the missing link to our transportation future

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Jim Aloisi is a former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation. He is on the board of the advocacy group TransitMatters.

There are many moving pieces to our transportation system, no pun intended. In order to develop and maintain a truly sustainable mobility system you need to understand and respond to how the pieces fit together. The utility and attractiveness of public transportation is directly related to the rider’s ability to access a bus stop or train station. In most instances, that requires a safe and convenient pedestrian pathway connecting the rider and her transit destination.

We spend a lot of time talking about modal equity, but the reality is that modal equity will come only when we have funding equity and planning equity. Our approach to transportation funding and planning has shortchanged citizens who are drawn to walking and cycling. Two straightforward ideas that, if enacted into law, would go a long way toward ensuring modal funding equity and safe pedestrian pathways. Those ideas are what I call Transit Improvement Districts (TID) and Safety Impact Reviews (SIR).

The TID concept is simple: allow local communities meeting certain population or destination thresholds to impose a carbon impact parking assessment on nonresidential parking facilities with 10 or more spaces. This would operate in two ways: first, it would identify parking as a specific set-aside revenue source; second, it would enable the public and private sectors to leverage this dedicated fund to make important pedestrian and bicycle investments.

The SIR would require projects meeting a certain financial or scale threshold – such as public infrastructure and utilities – to demonstrate impacts on bike and pedestrian safety and accessibility, measured against set metrics. The outcomes can be reviewed and impacts mitigated to maximize safety. By establishing clear thresholds for an SIR, we can ensure that it will not add undue time or expense to implementing smaller scale improvements like pedestrian islands or bike lanes in discrete urban environments. The SIR would be structured to encourage safe multi-modal mobility, with a specific focus on three desired outcomes: reduced likelihood of crashes; greater access to, and increased use of, streets and open space; and maximized access to light, public open space, ventilation, and recreation opportunities.

For those who think this will add to costs and red tape, I would point to the unacceptably high costs of inaction – bodily injury and death, the costs of litigation, and the loss of economic growth (expressed as both private sector investment and housing values). Pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly neighborhoods are less burdened by all these factors.

If an SIR is part of transportation planning, we can ensure the kind of thoughtful public process that will improve safety and quality of life. History has proven that this issue will not take care of itself – the transportation planning and design system that exists today is not designed to produce outcomes that are friendly to today’s changing mobility habits. We cannot rely on the status quo to change the paradigm it has lived with comfortably for decades. A truly multi-modal transportation system begins with funding equity. The time to act is now.

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s March 2017 newsletter.
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March 2017 Newsletter

March 2017 Newsletter

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“Funding equity is the missing link to our transportation future”
By Jim Aloisi/former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, Board member of the advocacy group TransitMatters
“Pricier Boston parking meters is a start”
By Brendan Kearney/Communications Director, WalkBoston
“Start planning a Jane’s Walk near you”
“Transit-Walkability Collaborative”

Download the March 2017 Newsletter PDF

Improving mobility for seniors and those with disabilities

Improving mobility for seniors and those with disabilities

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By Rachel Fichtenbaum

Rachel Fichtenbaum is a mobility information specialist at MassMobility. She researches best practices in community transportation, and disseminates them to practitioners statewide, providing technical assistance to help organizations improve mobility.

Finding transportation can be a challenge for seniors and people with disabilities looking to get to medical appointments, jobs, or other destinations, especially in suburban and rural areas. While some require a ride, walking is also an important mode of travel. Over the last five years, the state’s MassMobility program – a joint initiative of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and MassDOT – has worked with transportation providers, human service agencies, and advocates in all regions of Massachusetts to identify needs and develop solutions to increase mobility for seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income commuters. Improved walkability is a recurring theme of our conversations and our work.

Walkability facilitates access to transit, getting from home to the bus route, and then from the bus stop to the destination. When the members of the Cape and Islands Regional Coordinating Council reviewed results of a survey of over 250 transit riders and potential riders, lack of sidewalks or other infrastructure along bus routes emerged as the number one barrier preventing people from using public transit. As a result, the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority has partnered with regional planners on a bus stop audit to determine where improvements may be needed.

Walkability near bus stops is a particularly important issue for travel trainers, people who teach seniors and people with disabilities the skills and knowledge they need to ride transit independently and safely. Earlier this year, travel trainers from around the state convened for a presentation on intersection design from Meg Robertson, Director of the Orientation and Mobility department at the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. Using images of Massachusetts intersections to illustrate her points, Robertson presented an overview of types of intersections and challenges each type can present to pedestrians. She emphasized that street crossing involves a number of choices, and that while no travel trainer can prevent all danger, risk factors can be reduced.

Pedestrian safety is also important for people who use wheelchairs and mobility devices. AGE TRIAD, a group of public safety officials and senior centers representing the Berkshire County towns of Alford, Great Barrington, and Egremont, as well as the local Fairview Hospital,
sponsored a “Be Seen, Be Safe” event at the Great Barrington Senior Center in July – all attendees received free, safety-yellow vests. Staff and volunteers gave out flags for scooters and helped attendees decorate their scooters with reflective tape. The event was spurred by a tragic crash in which a driver of an SUV hit a person using a scooter who was crossing the street from senior housing to a grocery store in Great Barrington in 2015. The driver said she never saw the pedestrian, so AGE TRIAD, at the urging of the Great Barrington Chief of Police William Walsh, decided to conduct a public awareness campaign to increase pedestrian safety and visibility.

To learn more about these or other projects, please visit MassMobility at www.mass.gov/hst, or subscribe to its monthly newsletter at www.tinyurl.com/MassMobility

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s printed Winter 2017 newsletter.

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